


Beautiful People with Beautiful Problems

by TheQueenAndTheBee



Category: Glee
Genre: Broadway Star Rachel Berry, Conversations about diet culture, Developing Friendships, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Recovery, F/F, Not Canon Compliant, Religious Discussion, Romantic Friendship, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Title from a Lana Del Rey Song, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29514603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenAndTheBee/pseuds/TheQueenAndTheBee
Summary: Quinn Fabray has spent years trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in life after coming to terms with the reality of her teenage years. And when one Rachel Berry reappears, she has to decide if Rachel fits into that picture.
Relationships: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Beautiful People with Beautiful Problems

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any of the characters from Glee and all rights belong to their respective owners. This work is purely for entertainment and no profit is being made from it. Please do not repost this work on any other website.
> 
> This story does address religious belief and features several conversations around breaking free of diet culture. These are not meant to contradict or challenge anyone's lived experiences; these are simply certain perspectives on these issues that I think Quinn would relate to. 
> 
> I haven't quite decided if I want to make this a full fic yet; I don't even know if this story really even has a plot! But Quinn is my comfort character and I was fascinated with the idea of what her life would be like after McKinley. I haven't written fanfic in YEARS so I'm sorry if I'm a little rusty. Comments and kudos are hugely appreciated and I'll reply to every one I get. Let me know if you'd like me to continue this piece and I hope you enjoy!

Sat in the corner booth of a greasy spoon in a random side-alley of New York, Quinn Fabray nursed an oily coffee and wondered what sick joke the universe was playing that she was waiting on Rachel Berry once again.

A waitress who wore her indifference like a designer gown walked over and practically dropped Quinn’s croissant on the sticky table in front of her. Doing her best to muster the Bitch Queen face of old, Quinn spat out an acerbic ‘thank you’ and bit into the pastry. It was soggy and stodgy, nothing like the croissants she’d tasted in Paris back when her family actually included her in their vacations, but she was going to finish it regardless. She pushed some crumbs around the plate, trying to ignore the growing sense of anxiety that rippled up from her stomach to her throat. She closed her eyes and tried to do the breathing exercises her therapist had taught her – in for four, hold for eight, out for four – but then Rachel’s smug little face would punch its way into her brain and she’d be on the verge of hyperventilating once again.  
  
Quinn shoved more croissant in her mouth, taking comfort in its doughy familiarity. Brunch dates had become a regularity while she was at Yale, her and her friends incorporating studying into their regular acts of indulgence at small cafes just like the one she was sat in now. She still liked to work out, running and doing Pilates workouts on YouTube, but breaking free of the tyranny of Sue Sylvester meant that her relationship with food became one of pleasure rather than regiment and obligation. And so she went up two dress sizes and unapologetically ate pastries. She graduated from Yale and got a job working as a proof-reader at a publishers in New York. She had weekly therapy sessions and slowly came to terms with her past. She had friends, a tiny apartment that she’d filled with antique furniture, and a pet cat called Juniper. For the first time in her life, Quinn Fabray felt something close to happiness.

And then Rachel Berry happened.

It wasn’t that she’d tried to eliminate McKinley entirely from her life. She still spoke to Mercedes and Sam every so often, and whilst she wasn’t massively close to Santana and Brittany any more, their friendship something that yet again had been curated by Coach Sue, they still liked each other’s pictures on Instagram and tagged each other in the occasional meme. But that was the extent of it. And one person who she had left behind was Rachel.  
  
They had been friends when they graduated. She had given her a Metro North pass, for God’s sake. But then, whenever Rachel emailed her asking when she was free for a visit, Quinn left the messages in her ‘Spam’ box. It was illogical, she knew that – she hadn’t always been known for her rationality – but the idea of Rachel coming to New Haven, becoming a part of a world that Quinn had cultivated for herself and opening up a wound that had only just begun to heal, caused panic attacks that would leave her breathless hours later. And so eventually the frequency of the emails dwindled to nothing, and Rachel became a distant supernova in Quinn’s universe, a bright peripheral beauty that belonged lightyears away. Then, one day, four years later, a Friend Request from one Rachel Berry appeared on her Facebook and she had accepted. Their conversations had been friendly and tepid, and when Rachel asked to meet up after a couple of weeks Quinn had accepted before she had time to consider the implications.  
  
Quinn took a deep breath when a polite cough came from next to her. She turned and there, in a dress ripped out of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and looking like every dream and nightmare Quinn had ever had, was Rachel Berry. She smiled anxiously down at her, trailing her fingers through the faux-fur hem of her coat sleeve.  
  
“Hello Quinn,” she said in that delicate little tone she’d always had, and Quinn could feel the world begin to crumble beneath her. Shit.

Quinn watched as Rachel held the laminated menu in her manicured hands, crinkling her nose as she squinted down at the blurred words.  
  
“What’s good here?”  
  
“I’ve never been here before,” Quinn shrugged. “I can say definitively that the coffee is shit though.”  
  
“I’m more of a tea girl anyway.”  
  
The waitress walked over once again, pulling her notepad out of her pinafore. “What can I get you?”  
  
“I’ll have another coffee and the loaded omelette,” Quinn said, ignoring the way Rachel smirked at her drink choice.  
  
“And I’ll have a peppermint tea and a vegan fruit and cookie parfait.”  
  
The waitress jotted down the order, before she narrowed her eyes at Rachel. A good ten seconds passed before recognition lit up her features and her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my – sorry, but are you Rachel Berry?”  
  
“Yes,” she said, her expression tightening as the waitress flapped her hands wildly. “Sorry, did you want an autograph or -?”  
  
“Yes please,” she gushed, handing over her pad. Rachel signed the paper with a flourish and handed it over with a curt dismissive nod. The waitress scuttled off and Quinn tilted her head as Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose.  
  
“You don’t seem to like being recognised.”  
  
“Not when it happens every single day,” she huffed. “Sometimes it would be nice to just have lunch with a friend without someone sticking their nose in.”  
  
“Huh. Never thought I’d hear Rachel Berry bemoan fame,” she smiled, refusing to acknowledge the flutter in her stomach at being called her ‘friend’. Rachel’s posture unwound slightly and she shrugged.  
  
“A lot changes over time.”  
  
Quinn didn’t miss the way that Rachel’s eyes dragged over her body, and she found herself crossing her arms across her stomach unintentionally. She wasn’t ashamed of the way she looked, but it had been so long since Rachel had seen her, and those teenage insecurities still liked to rear their ugly heads from time to time. Rachel must have noticed this, because her expression softened and she gave her a gentle smile that reminded Quinn of sunbeams poking out through grey clouds.  
  
“You look good, Quinn.”  
  
“So do you,” she muttered. “You haven’t aged a day.”  
  
Rachel grinned. “So what have you been up to since high school?”  
  
Quinn scratched her chin. “Um, all sorts of things, really. I work for Dodo Publishers as a proof-reader. I’ve taken up knitting. I’m in a stamp collecting group.”  
  
“God, I’d never expect that from Quinn Fabray,” Rachel laughed.  
  
“Yeah, well, like you said. Things change.” She nodded her thanks to the waitress, a different one this time who was slightly less obvious in her admiration of Rachel, as she handed over their drinks. “What about you? Aside from becoming Broadway royalty.”  
  
Rachel scoffed, taking a sip of her tea and wincing as it burnt her upper lip. “I don’t really get time to do anything aside from the royalty thing. If I’m not on press tours, I’m rehearsing, or recording, or performing. I guess the closest thing to a hobby I have is my morning spin class.”  
  
“That sounds shit,” Quinn sympathised.  
  
“I don’t really have a right to complain. I’m living my dream, you know?” Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it sounded like there was a level of uncertainty in Rachel’s voice.  
  
“How’s Jesse?” she asked and Rachel’s brows pinched together. Unconsciously, her hand drifted to a necklace around her neck. Quinn’s blood turned to static when she noticed that it was the one Finn had bought her all those years ago.  
  
“He’s fine. We broke up, actually.”  
  
“Oh… I’m sorry,” Quinn frowned, but Rachel only shook her head.  
  
“No, it’s… it’s for the best. Do you know,” she said, meeting Quinn’s eyes, “that he wanted to marry me?”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yep. Found the ring and everything.” She drummed the fingers of her free hand on the table. “When I was at school, I had such a clear-cut idea of love. That when you found it it was forever. But then Finn died, and Kurt’s filing for divorce from Blaine -”  
  
“ _Really?_!” Quinn interjected, eyes widening.  
  
“Yeah. Turns out love isn’t enough.” She laughed bitterly and forced a smile on her face. “But what about you? Your Facebook doesn’t say anything about you dating anyone.”  
  
Quinn took a sip from her lukewarm coffee, trying to conjure up a response that would satiate Rachel without telling the truth. She had been on dates, of course. She had had one night stands, fucking away her feelings before her therapist helped her find healthier, more yarn-related coping mechanisms, and had even tried the odd relationship. But none of them had worked out, and Quinn knew why. She wasn’t dense. The reason was right in front of her.  
  
“Just don’t have the time,” she decided on, thankful when the waitress brought over their food. Her omelette was loaded with cheese and ham, with avocado slices on the side. She cut into it, savouring the stretch of the cheese before bringing it to her mouth. Rachel prodded her parfait delicately, before taking a small bite. She kept glancing over to the omelette with a forlorn expression. Quinn wondered if it was the ham.  
  
“Shit, this is probably the worst thing I could order while I’m sat with a vegan, isn’t it?”  
  
Rachel waved her hand. “No, it’s fine, honest. It looks good, actually. It’s just that my manager has me on this diet, and -”  
  
“What?” Quinn frowned. “Rachel, you don’t need to diet.”  
  
“It’s at my manager’s behest,” she shrugged. “It comes with the career.”  
  
“That’s bullshit,” Quinn said. “You should be allowed to eat what you want. I don’t see how your performance relies on you being a certain weight.”  
  
Rachel went quiet and Quinn couldn’t help but feel like she said the wrong thing. She looked out to the street. The rain pelted down on the concrete, people swathed in trench coats rushing past with their umbrellas held high. Even the buildings seemed hunched over against the torrent, scowling down at the glistening pavement beneath them. There was something beautiful in the very unprovocative scene. When she was younger Quinn had always dreamt of moving somewhere like Michigan, with towering mountains and pine trees that touched the stars. New York just happened to be where the job opportunities were, and so she made do with the manmade mountains and the streetlights with their peeling paint and revolutionary stickers instead. She didn’t realise she’d been staring for so long until Rachel coughed, a frown on her face.  
  
“Quinn? You okay?”  
  
“Hm? Oh, yeah.” She sighed and turned back to her plate, putting her fork down. “Rachel, why did you want to meet up today?”  
  
Rachel blanched, her spoon halfway to her lips. “What?”  
  
“We hadn’t spoken for years when you sent me that friend request. What made you do it?”  
  
Rachel shifted, the faded red leather beneath her squeaking. At that moment, they were back in linoleum high school corridors washed with lime neon and whispered rumours that started in Quinn’s lips. Rachel looked terrified, like she was waiting for something awful to happen, and on a distant planet in Quinn’s universe maybe it would have. But there wasn’t that satisfaction in it anymore. She regretted the question, but then Rachel took a deep breath and nodded.  
“You never wrote me back.”  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
The fear was gone now. Rachel met her eyes and her own were coal, dark and hard as a dormant frustration stirred in her, woken up by Quinn’s questioning. “You never wrote me back. All that talk about us being friends, about being brought together by everything that happened, and you never spoke to me again. Like it never meant anything to you.”  
  
“It did, but -”  
  
“But what?” she snapped. “I don’t know what I did to you to make you throw me aside like that, Quinn.”  
  
“It wasn’t anything you did,” she insisted. Not intentionally, anyway.  
  
“Do you know the most hurtful thing?” Rachel continued, pushing her teacup and bowl to the side so that she could lean in closer. “I mourned you. And there was no pain like it. Not even when you were bullying me and throwing slushies at me and calling me names.”  
  
That dormant frustration that had been in Rachel exorcised itself in Quinn, and she clenched her teeth. “Stop playing the victim, Rachel! You were just as much of a bitch as I was. You just think that because you hid it behind a bubblegum aesthetic it made it less obvious. I’ve read the articles about you, you know. You’re not fooling anyone.”  
  
They glared at one another, hands forming fists and the tension in the air coming to life in the quivering refrain of Quinn’s heartbeat. She wanted her Cheerios uniform on, that ancient armour that, whilst dull and scratched-up to hell, was still strong. But she wasn’t that girl anymore, and she wasn’t Rachel’s enemy, despite it all. So she took a steadying breath, closed her eyes, and forced herself to breathe.  
  
“I’m sorry. That was unkind,” she ground out, taking her knife and fork and cutting into the omelette once more.  
  
Rachel frowned. “Is that it?”  
  
Quinn smirked up at her, not overly kind but not cruel either. “You wanted more drama?”  
  
“Well, no, but…” Rachel trailed off, conscious of the waitresses watching them from the counter. She flushed and shook her head, stabbing at the parfait with her forgotten spoon. “It’s nothing.”  
  
And they both knew it was a lie, but Quinn let it slide anyway.

They’d ordered milkshakes. ‘Freakshakes’ were the proper names, colossal things that were doused in cream and sweets. Rachel had selected a vegan Oreo one at Quinn’s insistence, chocolate sauce dripping down the sides and crushed biscuit cresting the whipped cream peak. Her face lit up when it arrived, and despite her occasional utterances about her bullshit diet, the joy that emanated from her being told a different story. Quinn had gone for a simple strawberry one, a pastel pink beauty that was sweet and comforting. She dipped her finger in the cream and sucked it off the tip absently, avoiding the way Rachel’s pupils dilated slightly.  
  
“Do you still go to church?” the other woman asked.  
  
Quinn raised her eyebrow, a little jarred by the sudden question. “No.”  
  
“How come?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Quinn said after a moment. “I suppose my relationship with the church was another toxic one to add to the list.”  
  
“I’ve been going to the synagogue more,” Rachel said, taking a sip from her drink.  
  
“Yeah? What inspired that decision?”  
  
“New York can be lonely. My religion’s something familiar to me. It gave me something to focus on.”  
  
“The massive workload wasn’t enough?” she asked mildly, and Rachel shot her a weary look.  
  
“It’s not that. It’s more that… there was someone to talk to. About everything, you know? It’s like you said, I know what the papers say about me.” Quinn flushed in embarrassment but Rachel didn’t seem perturbed. “It’s quite hard to shake a reputation like that, and honestly I don’t know if I want to. But when you find you really need someone to talk to and there’s no-one on the end of the line you feel will truly hear you, it’s nice to just… send off a prayer, you know?”  
  
Quinn did know. She still spoke to God every night. It was a habit more than anything, a tiny slither of self-care like putting on a face mask or watching your favourite film. She wouldn’t clasp her hands together and squeeze her eyes shut like she did as a child; rather, it was a quiet conversation that she had whilst making her dinner, or during an ad break. It was familiar, and less about asking and more about telling. She had stopped asking God for help after the incident with Shelby, because deep down she knew she wasn’t asking for the right things. Or the right things for her, in any case. So she told God about her day, about her feelings, and simply let it exist between them. It was healthier that way after a lifetime of being told that the only way to worship God was by evangelical extremes that, at least to Quinn, seemed completely counterintuitive to what the Bible actually said. It had taken a _lot_ of therapy to unpack that childhood trauma.  
  
“I understand,” she said quietly, dipping her finger into the cream again. “I’m glad it’s helping you.”  
  
"It is. But, if I’m honest, sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.” Rachel cringed as she said it. “I know how bad that sounds.”  
  
“No, I get it. When I got pregnant, I spent hours asking for an explanation as to why this was happening to me. Begging for an answer. And when there was no burning bush or angel appearing in the middle of the night, I felt scammed. The only place I actually got any support was from the Glee Club, for fuck’s sake.” She laughed, shaking her head. “But I suppose that was the answer, in the end. Beth was never going to be my family, but the pregnancy gave me one anyway. And that was what I needed at the time.”  
  
“And now?”  
  
Quinn met her eyes. This felt like a conversation too heavy for a crappy diner on a Wednesday, but then they had both spent their entire teenage years questioning their existence in a tatty old music room, so perhaps this was as good a place as any.  
  
“I find that life brings you the things you need when you need it. When I was at school I had no sense of purpose, no identity beyond the fallen Queen Bee, no home. And then for some reason, you all decided to give me all three. I needed that then to be where I am now. And now… now I just need peace.”  
  
“What’s that?” Rachel quipped, but the joke fell flat and rattled between them.  
  
Quinn bit her lip and leant forward, taking Rachel’s hands in hers. They were smooth and polished, the hands of a performer with more assistants than she knew what to do with. “You need to find peace, Rach.”  
  
“That’s the problem, Quinn,” she whispered, eyes filling with tears. “I don’t think I know how.”  
  
Tentative, Quinn ran her thumb along the swells of Rachel’s knuckles. They were both trembling, but neither of them acknowledged it. They just sat in the moment, revelling in the feeling of one another’s skin and the gentle patter of the rain against the grimy glass window.

The waitress placed the cheque in front of them with two mints sitting atop the paper. Quinn reached into the pocket of her trench coat for her wallet, but Rachel just shook her head and tossed her credit card on the table.  
  
“This one’s on me.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah.” Rachel smiled softly. “You can get the next one.”  
  
Quinn laughed and held her hands up in acquiescence. “Okay, that’s fair. So, what are you going to do now?”  
  
Rachel pursed her lips as she thought, an adorable habit that had clearly carried over from McKinley. “I’m not sure. I’m not really used to days off.”  
  
“Would you want to go to the Solomon R. Guggenheim with me? They’ve got a new collection in.” Quinn tried to hide her blush by tying on her scarf, a straggly mismatched thing that she had knitted way back when she’d first started learning. The ends weren’t tied off properly, and there were yawning gaps amongst the yarn from where she’d dropped her stitches, but she loved it anyway. It felt like a metaphor for her life, on some pretentious existential level.  
  
“Really? You want me to come?”  
  
And really, how could Quinn resist those eyes? “Of course.”  
  
So they paid for their meals and wandered down the sodden streets of New York, their fingers just trailing against each other. There were sunbeams passing through the concrete clouds and Quinn turned her face up to meet them. This wasn’t peace, not entirely, but it was something close to it.


End file.
